COMMENT | How to protect journalists from online harassment

COMMENT | France is one of the few countries that have introduced laws that address cyber-harassment, including that aimed at journalists. Others would do well to emulate it.

Online harassment of journalists is a growing problem, with harassers often targeting those who write about trolls, white-supremacist groups, and other nasty patches of the web’s underbelly. And women journalists are the most vulnerable – particularly when they cover supposedly “male” topics such as sports, says Sarah Guinee, who researched online harassment as a Patti Birch fellow for gender and media freedom at the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

Generally, journalism associations and defenders of free expression tend to agree with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg that in a “marketplace of ideas,” all ideas should be on the table, and the best ones will win out. In other words, we should fight bad information and ideas with better information and ideas.

But the online behaviour addressed by France’s legislation goes well beyond normal exchange of information and ideas. For starters, the sheer quantity of hostility creates a crowding-out effect, so that much online speech that should be heard cannot be. Moreover, online abusers often use different tactics than those used offline. Digital harassment can include doxing (publishing someone’s home address or other personal information online), pile-ons (where many people attack one person), dissemination of disturbing images, revenge porn, impersonation, and cyberstalking...